


Hard Light

by SolainRhyo



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Acceptance, Death, F/M, Grief, Smut, Suffering, Torture, Violence, hard choices, more smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:46:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28189425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolainRhyo/pseuds/SolainRhyo
Summary: You can't escape Johnny, can't outrun him, can't exile him. Can't escape the way you start to feel about him either - or the way he starts to feels about you. Thing is, you're pretty much fucked, and only one of you is going to make it past the finish line.SPOILERS for the game's endings.
Relationships: Female V/River Ward, Goro Takemura/Female V, Goro Takemura/Reader, Goro Takemura/You, Johnny Silverhand/Female V, Johnny Silverhand/Reader, Johnny Silverhand/V, Johnny Silverhand/You, River Ward/Reader, River Ward/You
Comments: 16
Kudos: 230
Collections: Cyberpunk 2077 Fave fics





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> List of [streetslang](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Streetslang_\(2020\)) from the game that I have and will be using.

“I don’t like what you’re thinkin.’”

You could play dumb, pretend you don’t know what Johnny’s on about but he lives in your head, is privy to your thoughts, your reactions, your urges. You know that the impulse you’d felt just now while looking at Goro is precisely what he is referring to. You debate snarking back but opt not to. It’ll make no difference. Instead you shift your stance, brace your elbows on the railing as you lean over it to peer at the ground some seventeen stories below.

“Not a lot of room for error,” you say to Goro, breaking the silence that had fallen between you both. At your side the former bodyguard sighs, tilts his head, his eyes following the same path yours had taken.

“No,” he admits, “but it is all we can do. Are you having doubts?”

“Fuck, yes.” Johnny says. You can see him in the periphery of your vision, his back against the very same railing, his outline a little blue, a little wavering as he crosses his arms over his chest and glares in your direction. Even though he’s not really here, his stare carries weight. Disconcerting fact, that, but you ignore it the way you ignore most everything else he says and does. You’re getting better at it.

“Always,” is your reply to Goro. He slants you a glance, one brow furrowed, and you shake your head with a smile. “But I’m committed. Already told you that. You n’ me, we’ll get this done.”

His face smooths and he nods his head, a gesture of muted gratitude. In the short, tumultuous period of time the two of you have had together, you’ve grown somewhat familiar with his moods, his expressions. He straightens, hands gripping the railing, and you watch as something heavy and grim etches itself into the lines of his face. It’s quiet worry, along with something like sorrow, or maybe loss. You get it. You do. Neither of you had walked out of Arasaka Tower whole. An urge flickers through you again.

“Don’t.” Johnny warns.

You lift your hand slowly, place it on Goro’s shoulder. He turns his head only slightly, artificial eyes flicking from your fingers to your face. There’s a question in his gaze, in the lift of one eyebrow, and the answer to it is caged behind your teeth. This is a precarious balance the two of you have struck and it won’t take much, you know, to topple it. Still, though… the two of you have forged this unlikely bond through the flames of tribulation, and what you’re wanting now could be a natural progression… _if_ you proceed carefully.

“V.” Johnny is abruptly closer now, right next to you. If he were real, you know, you’d feel his voice low and furious in your ear, feel his breath against your cheek. Sometimes, when the omega blockers start to wear off, he becomes more… _actual_ . Except not, of course, because it’s not possible as he’s just an engram in your head. But when the drugs start to lose their edge, Johnny _does_ become more real. You start hearing him as though through your ears rather than in your mind, and when the mental construct you interpret him as touches you, you’re almost certain you can _feel_ it. Right now, though, he’s just an irritating vision, buzzing his disapproval of the things you intend to do with _your_ body.

“Your body, yeah,” Johnny acknowledges, reaching for you. You can almost feel his hand gripping your upper arm. Almost. “But you’re not alone in here anymore. And I’d _really_ prefer not to have to swap fluids with this has-been Bennie. Christ, V, he was a fuckin’ ‘Saka cylon. This really what you want for an output?”

 _Fuck off,_ is the snarling thought you send at him, _or I’ll swallow a mouthful of blockers._

He mutters something indecipherable and then he’s gone. You are able to focus the whole of your attention on Goro, who is watching you in silence, whose face gives away no indication of what he’s thinking.

“Tomorrow’s a big day,” you tell him softly. “And we both know our chances are…”

“Slim,” he provides with a faint, troubled smile.

“Slim,” you agree. “But that’s then, and this is now. And, Goro, if tonight’s the only good one we’ve got left, well…”

You fully expect your suggestion to crash and burn. After a moment he moves, reaches around to cover your hand with his. He squeezes gently before lifting your hand away. You flash him a brief smile, disappointed but not bitter. Oh well. You took your shot.

He doesn’t let you go, though. Instead he threads his fingers through yours, tugs you closer even as he turns toward you. “V,” he says, and what’s written on his face now is entirely new to you.

Your free hand finds his cheek, deciphers its curve beneath your palm. His optics, sophisticated hardware that they are, are still somehow capable of being as expressive as the real deal, and right now they’re regarding you with a mixture of wonder and soft lust. You’re still a curiosity to him, the strange woman whose body he’d pulled from the junkyard, the mercenary that held a secret that had nearly killed you both. You were enemies once, are uncertain allies now, but you know each other well enough to exchange bad jokes and personal memories. This relationship you have with each other, odd as it is, is strong enough that tomorrow, during what will most certainly become a bullet ridden clusterfuck, you will both do your best to keep each other alive.

You kiss him first, a slow and almost hesitant advance. A part of you still thinks maybe you’ve read him wrong. He responds, though, mouth firm against yours, letting go of your hand in order to wrap his arm around your waist. Time spent in close proximity has made you familiar with his scent—worn leather, the slight metallic tinge you attribute to his hardware, and just the slightest hint of citrus. You breathe it in now as your tongue darts past his teeth, as his grip on you tightens in response.

“Not here,” he rasps long minutes later when he pulls away. You’re not going to argue, because you don’t really want to fuck up here on a rooftop bathed in the lurid light cast by the blue blinking neon Chevillion sign above. You murmur your agreement, follow gamely as he leads you to the elevator. As the doors close you press against him, nuzzling at his neck, feeling the cool smoothness of the cabling there beneath your lips. Most of the time cyberware dulls sensation but sometimes it doesn’t, and you’re curious to know which side Goro’s falls on. He surprises you, surging forward, pushing you until the wall of the elevator is solid at your back. You fail to stifle your gasp. He smiles.

You drive back to the shitty motel he’s holed up in. You’ve never appreciated the raw power and speed of your Cthulhu more than you do right now. Goro sits silently in the passenger seat as you navigate the streets at extremely unrecommended speeds. He doesn’t grope you. He doesn’t touch you. He doesn’t need to. In the darkness, you can feel it every time he looks at you, feel the heat and intensity of his desire. You let it wash over you, excite you, until you’re fidgeting in the seat.

“Almost there,” he says quietly, those words a hushed mesh of amusement and craving.

“Yeah,” you say, and the tires squeal as you roar into the motel’s parking lot.

**.x.**

“You’re a hot piece,” Johnny had said the first time you’d stood naked before the mirror after the very unfortunate incident that rendered him a resident in your brain. You’d just come out of the shower and you weren’t used to him yet. You’d jerked away from the sink and done your best to cover your body from his sight, which was inconveniently also _your_ sight. His low chuckle had rolled through your mind, and as though entirely oblivious to your discomfort, he went on.

“Not a lot of hardware. Rare to see, even back in my day. Those your natural tits?”

“Fuck off,” you’d snapped, squeezing your eyes shut.

“Oh, come on. Little late to play shy. I’m with you all the time now, remember?”

“I can fix that,” was your retort as you made a quick, dripping beeline toward the couch where you’d tossed the bottles of pseudoendotrizine and omega blockers.

“Calm the fuck down,” he’d said as you’d reached for the blue pills. “All I did was pay you a compliment.”

He’d materialized, for lack of a better word, near your window, staring out of it as he raised a cigarette to his mouth. He took a drag, blew the smoke out in a long, narrow plume. “Nice view you got,” he’d said with a thrust of his chin, and then turned to look back at you over his shoulder. “Nice view in here, too,” he added with a smirk.

Your first instinct had been to dart back to the bathroom to grab a towel, but you’d subdued the urge, instead squaring your shoulders and meeting his eyes head on. He had a point — he was going to be with you everywhere you went until you were able to sort this fucking disaster out. You could either let him make you uncomfortable in your own skin or you could just ignore him —or try to, at least.

Your defiance pleased him. He gave you an approving nod. “That’s right, V. Be proud of what you got. If you’d been around fifty years ago, you n’ me coulda —”

“No.” you bit out. “Nope.”

His laughter had followed you back to the bathroom.

**.x.**

“Beautiful,” Goro breathes as you pull your shirt off and toss it to the side. His hands are on you, at your sides but skimming upward, the cold metal of his knuckles making you shiver a little. You kiss him as you work at the buttons of his shirt. It’s too nice a piece of clothing to tear off. By the time you reach the last button your hands are trembling a little with eagerness. You push the white fabric off his shoulders and down his arms, and as he works his wrists free your hands are gliding over his chest. His cyberware extends down to his abdomen, and you can catch a glimpse of the red cables beneath the silver plating. As the bodyguard for the Arasaka monarch he’d been heavily modded, but the consequences of his disgrace had stripped him of most of it. The scars and marks of his removed cyberware are obvious and many but you pay them no mind other than to run your hands over them in a quest to feel as much of him as you can.

He backs away from you, beckons you to follow and as you do so you work at the snap of your pants. He’s removed his, swiftly and gracefully, and draws closer to help you with yours. He pushes them down your hips; you try to wriggle out of them but halt with a gasp as he slides his fingers down to press against you through the damp fabric of your panties. He rubs there, searching for the sweet spot, but you catch him by the wrist so that you can shed these last layers of clothes. As you work your way out of them he walks backward, sinks down on the bed, nude and blatantly aroused. His cock rises in a hard, long line against his stomach and you walk toward him on legs that feel a little wobbly, tasting desire’s heady tang on the back of your tongue. He moves back just enough that you can straddle him, his hands gripping your hips, and you reach down between you both, fumbling to take him in your hand. He groans as you stroke him slowly, once, twice, closing his eyes. You press your lips against his, trail them along his jaw, duck your head to let your mouth glide over the cables beneath his chin. A shudder wracks his form and he grabs you by the elbows.

“V,” he says, a soft command. 

You acquiesce, spreading your legs a little wider, guiding him. The tip of him pushes into you and you slide down slowly, your eyes fastened on his face to watch as pleasure stiffens the set of his jaw, narrows his eyes. He returns the favor a heartbeat later, fingers digging firmly into the flesh at your hips to pull you down until you’re completely seated and then he rolls his hips, shoving upward until he bottoms out, stroking over that spot inside you. A euphoric mewl erupts from your throat and he intercepts it with his mouth, claiming it, swallowing it. Your hands are on his shoulders, fingers flexing in time with each slow thrust. Any attempt by you to increase the pace is thwarted by his hands on your waist, slowing you down, one corner of his mouth tipping upward in a half-smile as you whisper complaints. You focus on the feel of him inside you, rest your forehead against his as you clench around him. The growl that spills from his mouth raises the flesh on your arms.

He nips at your mouth while his hands abruptly slide up your back. You’re unprepared for the sudden movement as he rolls you both over, find yourself suddenly on your back staring up at him. You wrap your legs around him tightly, encourage him to continue by biting at his neck. He drives into you hard, sets a new rhythm that has the mattress rocking, has the headboard banging against the wall. Strands of his hair have come loose, falling forward over his shoulders to brush against your shoulders and breasts.

“Goro,” you pant as your orgasm approaches, feeling every muscle in your body stiffening in anticipation. He’s close too, and as that glorious feeling breaks over you he grunts, hips stuttering as he spasms within you. You hold him close in the minutes that follow, unwilling to let this false sense of security, of contentment, slip away. These days, you take whatever good comes your way, no matter how fleeting. And you know, based on the way he rolls onto his side, pulls you with him, cradles you, that Goro is doing exactly the same thing. It’s a peculiar kind of succor you gain from each other, but for now, with tomorrow looming, it’s enough.

It's gonna have to be.

**.x.**

You wake up hours later, needing to pee. You’re not much for cuddling during sleep and apparently neither is Goro and as such, there’s no need to awkwardly disentangle yourself. You sit up, the cheap, thin mattress dipping with the movement. Goro stirs but doesn’t waken. You get to your feet slowly, blinking the darkened room into focus.

“So, the old fuck’s still capable of givin’ a good dicking.”

Johnny’s seated on one of the two chairs by the only window in this dingy room, legs spread, elbows resting on his knees. He’s not wearing his aviators and as he leans his head back against the wall, those dark eyes glint in the light of the streetlamp spilling in from outside.

He asks, “You get what you need?”

“Yeah,” you respond out loud, voice hardly more than a whisper. You cross the room, sink down into the other chair, hiss at the sensation of the cold metal against your bare ass. Johnny smiles a little as you squirm uncomfortably.

“Well, good, I guess. I mean, I coulda done without experiencing all of—” he lifts a hand, flaps it in the direction of the bed, “but if it’s what you needed… Still think you coulda done better than _him,_ though.”

“Wasn’t aware my outputs needed your approval.”

“Considerin’ I share your body now…”

“Still _my_ body.”

“Do me a favor,” he orders, turning his head to look at you directly. “You get an itch like this again, take enough blockers to put me under for a while.”

“You tellin’ me Johnny Silverhand, legendary rockerboy lover, can’t handle some cock?”

“Hah. Can handle it just fine. Just don’t prefer it. Part of why Kerry n’ me…” he trails off.

You don’t push, even though you’re curious. You know a bit about his history with Kerry Eurodyne, but now isn’t the time for a deep dive into things that transpired fifty years ago. You still have to pee, and if you’re lucky you might catch another three hours of sleep before dawn arrives and brings with it the dangerous, probably ill-fated scheme that you and Goro are going to execute. You stand, make your way in the direction of the bathroom.

“V.”

You glance back at Johnny over your shoulder.

“Old man was right.”

You frown in confusion, but before you can ask he’s gone, vanished back to whatever places he goes when he's not manifesting. He’s still aware of what you’re thinking, of course, but apparently it’s on you to puzzle out his statement. You take a piss, wash your hands in the thin, weak trickle of water that spurts out of the faucet, stare at yourself in the grimy mirror as you rethink all you and Goro had said to each other since arriving at this motel in an effort to figure out what Johnny was referring to. After you’d both entered this room, Goro had only said two things: he’d said your name, and—

–he’d called you beautiful.

Your heart misbehaves. You know Johnny can feel it, know he’s aware of the realization you just had. What privacy exists between you is contrived, because you are two people occupying one mind and there’s no way around that. So you take a deep breath, and try not to notice how suddenly wide your eyes appear in the mirror, and make your way back to the bed where Goro sleeps. He wakes briefly as lay down beside him, murmurs softly, slides an arm around your waist and tugs you nearer. You nestle against his chest, close your eyes, try to think about anything other than what you’d just realized, fail miserably.

Morning comes too soon.


	2. Chapter 2

You take a lot of jobs in the weeks that pass. Some are easily executed and others—well, others leave a mark. When you and Judy finally manage to locate Evelyn—when you carry her battered, broken form out of the BD studio in the basement of an abandoned power plant—it takes a part of you. You will never be able to forget the things you’d seen during your search for her, never be able to forget just what horrific things she’d endured herself. You leave Evelyn with Judy, a forlorn form huddled into a ball on the bed with her back to you both, cringing at the slightest touch.

The urge to stop by a bar on your way home, any bar, is nearly overwhelming, but you don’t. You’d been warned that your “affliction” — sharing your consciousness with the soul of a long dead rockerboy while his engram overwrites your neurons — could possibly be worsened by indulging in drink. Your preference for preem blended malt scotch may have been hard to set aside at any other time, but the news that Johnny Silverhand was now a resident in your head, coming right on the heels of Jackie’s death… well, you lost your lust for drinking. Tonight though, thinking of the dolls and joytoys you’d found eviscerated, hollowed out, raped and torn apart during your search for Evelyn, the urge to lose yourself in a bottle is close to overpowering.

You fight and win against the impulse. Getting blackout drunk would feel like an act of disrespect toward Evelyn, who has inarguably suffered more than any living being ever should. So you go home. You park the Cthulhu in the car park across the street and make your way to your apartment. You’re reliving the past forty-eight hours through vivid glimpses of human barbarity, and by the time you step off the elevator there’s a pounding in your temples that’s potent enough to make you wince. The lights flicker on when you cross the threshold; you slap your hand over the switch at the door, dousing the room in darkness. There’s enough illumination seeping in from the early evening vista of Night City for you to see your path as you make your way to the bathroom.

You don’t bother looking in the mirror. You know how haggard you look. Instead you strip, carelessly dropping your bloodied, dirtied clothing in a heap before stepping over it and into the shower. The spray of hot water is powerful—surprising, considering what a shithole this is—and you welcome the nearly punishing sensation as you turn around and let the water cascade over your back. You close your eyes, feel a stinging behind them that heralds bitter, livid tears. You and Jackie had set out to become legends in this city. Now he’s dead and every step you’ve taken upward since has been weighted, dragging, anchored by the horrible, awful things that you keep discovering, experiencing, realizing. You knew the road to the top would be a bloody one, thought you’d been prepared for the slog. You weren’t. You were too eager, too naive.

“Rough day.”

You open your eyes, lean your shoulder against the shower wall. Johnny’s digital ghost is standing before you, mirroring your pose. His customary aviators are missing, so too the armored vest he typically appears with. In its place is a black tank top emblazoned with the flaming head logo of Samurai. It occurs to you that you should be bothered by this, by him intruding in this manner, by him seeing you naked while you are emotionally vulnerable. Thing is, these past weeks have altered that part of you. It is what it is. He’s an irrefutable, irremovable part of your existence now. And… other things have changed. The two of you are far less adversarial than you had once been. Friends, maybe. Maybe something more than that, something unexplainable—soulmates by merit of sharing all that you do. He’s been helpful, too, during your day to day. He’d appeared sporadically throughout your search for Evelyn, offering commentary, giving advice. Through your eyes he’d seen every gory, savage bit of it. He seems to be handling it a bit better than you.

“Nothin’ surprises me anymore, V. I’ve seen it all.”

“I haven’t.”

“You’ll see more like it, if you keep goin’ the way you’re goin’.”

You heave a sigh, run your hands over your face, pushing back sopping strands of your hair. That pounding at your temples hasn’t abated at all.

“You havin’ second thoughts?”

“No,” is your reply, but it’s so quiet it’s nearly lost to the sound of the shower.

“That thing Dex asked you—”

“My answer is still the same, Johnny. Blaze of glory.”

He considers you a long moment as you tilt your head back enough to let the water spill over your brow. He blurs in your vision; you blink the moisture away. Finally he nods. “Alright then.”

Your mouth quirks up on one side. “I’ve got your seal of approval?”

His laugh is a wry expulsion of air. “Would it matter even if you did?”

“Not long ago, I would have said no,” you say, half-turning to grab a bottle of shampoo.

He watches as you squeeze some into your palm, as you massage it into your hair. “And now?”

“I do what I’ve gotta do, but I listen to you. Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” he echoes with an amused twist of his lips.

“You sayin’ I don’t?”

“Not sayin’ anything,” he replies. He produces a lit cigarette from nowhere and it dangles precariously from his mouth. He pushes away from the wall, straightens, steps out of the shower. When he’s gone you finish washing your hair, taking time to rub gently at your temples in an effort to alleviate the aching. You’re unsuccessful. You remain where you are for a few more minutes, facing the spray now, your head bowed as you let the heat of the water seep into your bones.

Johnny’s sitting on your couch when you finally exit, your hair wrapped in one towel, your body wrapped in another. He was watching the vidscreen but his head turns as you walk toward your desk, as you grab a bottle of painkillers, as you tap more than the recommended dose out into your hand. He says as you swallow them dry, “Got a suggestion.”

You walk to your closet. “And what would that be?”

“You need a break. Time out.”

You rifle through your hanging clothing until you find what you want, an oversized plain black tank top that hangs nearly to your knees. You shrug it on, your response muffled by fabric as you do so. “Won’t argue that.”

“Let me take the wheel.”

You can feel your expressions sharpening, your eyes thinning into slits as you look at him. He’s stretched out on the couch, legs crossed, head pillowed on one hand as he holds his cigarette with the other. “Calm your tits,” he orders. “Ain’t suggesting I go on a bender. Just figured it might be nice for you to… check out for a while. Get away from your thoughts and worries.”

You consider him for a few moments, running your tongue in a contemplative line along your top teeth. “I’ve got no way of knowing what you’ll do,” you say finally.

“You could try and trust me. We’ve been together long enough now that I thought maybe I earned that much, at least.”

His accusation sounds mild but it still stings, stings more than you’re willing to admit. “If I say yes… what’re you gonna do?”

“Relax. Sleep. Maybe get you a decent fuckin’ meal for once. Something hot that costs more than a couple eddies and doesn’t come from a vending machine in a back alley.” He takes a long pull from his cig, blows the smoke up at the ceiling. “Swear to you, won’t set foot outside this room.”

“Don’t think there’s enough in here to keep you entertained.”

“Won’t set foot outside this room,” he repeats. “I’ll get takeout, watch the feeds, sleep. Maybe dig around on the Net, see what old friends been up to these past fifty years.”

At one point, what he is suggesting would have terrified you. To relinquish control of yourself to the other person living in your head — that’s an eldritch fear, one that had almost paralyzed you in those early days when you were still learning to cohabitate in your mind with Johnny. He’s correct in what he said, though—the two of you have been through some shit. Seen some shit. Gained an understanding of each other that’s deeper than that you’ll ever know with anyone else—and you’re _still_ discovering hidden facets to each other, bits of random knowledge that are slowly becoming a greater whole. The truth is, what he’s offering you right now—a reprieve—sounds tempting. You’ve still got a bit of fear, yeah, but your faith in him has grown to the point where you’re willing to take a leap.

“Okay,” you tell him softly, moving closer to perch on the edge of the couch.

His eyebrows go up just a bit. “Yeah?” he asks, sitting up. He lets the cigarette fall from his fingers and it vanishes entirely.

“Yeah. Twenty-four hours, though. No longer.”

“Twenty-four's enough,” he says. He gets up, comes to sit beside you. “Means a lot, V. I know it ain’t easy.”

“Gettin’ easier.”

“Yeah.” He smiles a little, places a hand on your arm. You can’t feel it, but also you can—strange doesn’t even begin to describe what it’s like to exist this way. You find yourself wishing that the sensation you know you’re imagining is real, that his palm is actually resting heavy and warm against your flesh. You lift your eyes from his hand to his face and he’s watching you in that way that he does, dark eyes quietly intense as they always are. You think you see a microscopic change in his expression, a slight V between his brows accompanied by a nearly imperceptible shift in his posture, a slight lean toward you. You blink rapidly, recollections flooding through you from that night weeks ago, from what Johnny had implied using Goro’s words.

What you want, right now, is to feel the shape of his shoulders beneath your hands as you straddle him, the solidness of his thighs pressed against yours. You want your mouth on his, the roughness of his beard against your cheek, your chin. You want to taste him and know him in all the ways possible to you. You jerk your head around as arousal roars through you, because what you want is simply not possible. Johnny is not _real._ And the worst part of it is that he’s feeling what you’re feeling right now—

“Whoa,” he says, sounding a little breathless. “V—”

“Shut up,” you say tightly, reaching for the bottle of pseudoendotrizine. You roughly twist the cap off, spill a red pill into your hand, and pop it into your mouth. You swallow it dry just like you’d swallowed the others, hope fervently that it kicks in swiftly.

“We gonna just pretend the thought of me didn’t make you wet?”

“Yeah,” you sigh, burying your face in your hands, “we are.”

“Could have some fun with it, you know.”

“Could make it complicated. Needlessly complicated. I don’t need more complications in my life. Already got a considerable one with you livin’ in my head.” You suddenly feel light-headed. You collapse back against the couch as your vision darkens from the outside in. “Johnny,” you manage, and your voice sounds faint to your ears, “Promise me I won’t regret this…”

You think you hear a response. “Yeah. Promise.”

**.x.**

Awareness filters back gradually, a slow trickle that has you staring at your pillow for a long span of minutes before you really realize it. Your breathing is slow and even, breath fanning strands of your hair that have fallen forward over your brow. You shift, sliding one leg against the other, and realize that you feel… _good._ Relaxed. Rested. All things you haven’t felt for quite some time. You roll onto your back, bring your arms over your head in a languorous stretch. Your breath hisses out of your teeth, a pleasurable exhale, as you feel your stretch in your pointed toes.

“Morning.”

“Hey,” you say, your voice that special kind of gravelly you only get from deep, deep sleep. You roll your head to the side. Johnny’s sitting on the couch at the end closest to you, leaning back with one booted foot raised and resting upon your coffee table. You push yourself into a sitting position. Your tank top bunches around your thighs uncomfortably and you smooth it out with one hand.

“How long?” you ask him.

“Twenty-four hours, as agreed. Slept for more than half of it. You need to look after yourself more, V.”

“Noted,” you say. Your eyes scan your apartment quickly. It looks just as messy as it did when you’d taken the red pill but not any worse. There are no piles of empty and/or broken bottles littering the floor or lined up along the walls, no empty food containers strewn across the couch, no words of insurrections scrawled on your walls. It looks like—wonder of wonders—Johnny Silverhand behaved himself.

“Told you I would,” he says.

You don’t feel like getting up just yet so you turn, plump up your pillows, and lean back against them. “So what did you do?”

“Took it easy, like I told you. Ordered some Thai food and a couple preem bottles of rye. Don’t worry,” he adds as you open your mouth to chastise, “didn’t get drunk. Too drunk, at least. After that I just kicked back, ordered a couple of old movies from back in my day. Relaxed.” He lifts his other leg, crosses it over the other. If he was really there, he’d be leaving scuff marks all over your coffee table. “How you feelin’?”

“Good,” you reply, and then after a moment, “really good. You were right. I needed a break.”

“I like the sound of that,” he remarks.

“Sound of what?”

“You tellin’ me I’m right.”

You huff a laugh. “Well, I can admit it. You did good, Johnny.”

He executes a little salute in acknowledgement of your compliment, touching two fingers to his brow. You give your body another short stretch and sit up again, running your fingers over your blanket as you do so. You feel something solid beneath the blanket and with a frown, you lift them up to see what it is. Blood rushes to your face as you find yourself staring at your bright blue wand vibrator, which usually resides in a drawer at the foot of the bed.

Your voice is strangled. “Johnny—”

“Oh yeah. That.” He meets your blushing look of mingled mortification and ire with an insolent half-grin. “Can’t really blame me. Always wanted to know what it was like for the fairer sex. Took a while to get a feel for things but once I did… gotta say, I was impressed.”

You’re unable to speak as you parse it all. You want to be furious and you are, you are, but you are also undeniably turned on by the thought of Johnny exploring the sexual aspect of his new mortal confines, because your brain immediately inserts an image of you pleasuring yourself with the wand while he watches. While he watches and touches you, touches himself. You slam on the brakes for this discomfiting runaway series of fantasies but it’s too late. The damage is done—

“Yeah,” Johnny says, and there’s a softer, huskier quality to his voice as he looks at you. “I had that thought, too.”

It’s suddenly a little harder to breathe. You gaze at each other, woman and digital ghost, and the space between you is rife with all the things you are trying so very hard not to visualize. What you’d said before, you’d meant — this _is_ a complication, a huge one, and your life needs another one of those like you need an additional, non-cyberware related hole in the head. You’ll never be able to _actually_ fuck him—never be able to feel him inside you, against you. But there are still ways to indulge, to take advantage of this raw and unfettered attraction that has manifested between the two of you—

“Johnny,” you whisper. He flickers, vanishes, reappears right next to your bed. You suck in a shaky breath.

Someone starts pounding on your door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still with me, thank you for reading! I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and all the best in the new year!


End file.
